TBS

ELEAGUE's esports content programming outside of tournaments ranked high in 2017 and remains the same for 2018. The "Road to the Boston Major", a 5 part behind-the-scenes series on teams and their players, has performed well and higher than several programs last year. Episode 1 was against the Winter Olympics Opening Ceremony and the remaining 3 episodes should garner 200K+ viewers.

While the ELEAGUE Major wasn't shown on TV, it absolutely killed it on Twitch, setting a new record for viewership on a single channel with 1.1M+ peak concurrents.

Digging in a little deeper was the classic comparison of digital viewers vs. TV viewers, with Twitch grabbing 138,000 viewers compared with the average A-League audience of 119,000. However, assuming 100,000 average concurrent users for FIFA would still be impressive and in sight of A-League's audience.

DISNEY XD'S DIVE INTO ESPORTS

Disney XD's Dive Into eSports (Photo: Nintendo)

By Feature Writer: Jordan Fragen

TNL Take: You can point to Amazon's acquisition of Twitch in 2014 as eSports rapid inflection point. However beyond going to an event in person, the only previous way to watch and support your favorite teams and games was via digital platforms. As we reported last week, the number of eSports programs on TV has tripled in 2017 and brought visibility to a seemingly niche ecosystem.

Disney is bringing in a demographic younger than the traditional audience. In 2016, the average age for eSports TV viewers was 32 - an audience vastly younger than for traditional sports, but definitely not the stated target of young men 18+.

Herein lies the challenge.

In the last 7 weeks, Disney XD has aired matches from 8 different games and even more tournaments. Let’s take a closer look at each of these games to see what has resonated the most with Disney XD’s younger demographic.

One usual caveat before the analysis: Like any eSports TV data, the sample size is relatively limited to draw definitive conclusions.

/02 EA FIFA 17

Along with a Spanish language feed on ESPN Deportes, Disney XD also aired games from FIFA 17’s Ultimate Team Championship Series. EA has already seen some success airing the Madden Championship Series in both 2016 and 2017, but FIFA has the potential to reach a larger international audience given it’s airing Futbol and not Football.

KEY STAT:

70%+ of the audience was outside of the 18-49 age bracket - why was this so low?

/03 STREET FIGHTER V

Street Fighter is perhaps the most unique case of the bunch. In addition to airing EVO 2017, Disney has partnered with ESL to make ESL Brawlers. The program features a syndicated series of tournaments and highlights some of the game’s post promising talent.

KEY STAT:

The EVO 2017 Finals repeat garnered more viewers than the live event

/04 SPLATOON 2

Splatoon 2 is the second entry into one of Nintendo’s newest IPs. The game’s core mechanic of painting territory to capture makes the action easy to follow visually as I recently witnessed in person and further enhanced by the high quality spectator mode. Despite this franchise being new, it has Nintendo’s full support and is already extremely popular in Japan.

Splatoon 2 is the first game listed in this article that specifically appeals to Disney XD’s stated niche audience of young boys 13+. Given the less realistic nature and it’s vibrant color scheme, this shooter serves as a family friendly introduction to the First Person Shooter genre.

KEY STAT:

As to be expected, the later timeslots received far fewer viewers than the earlier airings

/05 ARMS

While ARMS itself is extremely fun to play and easy to learn, it looks rather simplistic which is not a recipe for success when making something that's to be enjoyed by a large audience.

KEY STAT:

Majority of of viewers (73%) were outside of the 18-49 demo as expected

/06 POKKEN TOURNAMENT DX

Originally released in Japanese arcades, Pokkén Tournament was a mash up of everyone’s favorite collectible monster franchise with the classic fighting game mechanics of the popular Tekken franchise.

Pokkén Tournament DX, the updated release for Nintendo’s Switch, hopes to remedy many of these problems and fulfill the initial promise of the mashup. And the initial airings point to a positive response from Disney XD’s audience.

KEY STAT:

Pokkén Tournament DX was aired directly after ARMS twice. In these cases, Pokkén Tournament DX had fewer viewers than ARMS, suggesting that the audience did not carry over

/07 SUPER SMASH BROS. FOR WII U

It's somewhat shocking to see Super Smash Bros. for Wii U is making an appearance on this list. Until this day, Nintendo has had a rocky relationship with the Smash Bros. community, with its most contentious point in 2013 when Nintendo attempted to prevent EVO from streaming Super Smash Bros. Melee on Twitch.

But Nintendo has begun to change its tone with regards to Smash.

Last year, Melee was given the spotlight on the largest stage in the Fighting Game Community and was aired on ESPN2. However, along with Street Fighter V, Smash 4 was broadcasted on Disney XD. This is a massive change of heart for Nintendo given that Smash is by far the largest eSport with virtually zero support from its publisher.

Without wading into the murky waters of Smash community politics, this decision to change the time slots for Melee and the series newest iteration was not universally well received.

However, from Nintendo’s perspective, the decision was clear.

Smash Bros. for Wii U’s EVO top 8 was the second highest rated eSport on Disney XD and the highest average viewership for any game on the network. When the finals were repeated 2 weeks later, Smash only lost 23% of its audience from its initial live airing.

KEY STAT:

When compared to the average show in the 6pm - 9pm time slot, Super Smash Bros. for Wii U earned 50% more average concurrent viewers. Yes, that’s right - 50%.

So overall, what should you take away from Disney’s first few weeks in eSports?

Let’s start off by comparing the average viewership numbers for all 63 eSports programs aired on Disney XD.

It will be interesting to see if these viewership numbers remain consistent in the Fall when kids are back in school. I would also like to continue to see more family friendly games and eSports as Disney XD could serve as a pipeline for not only mainstream viewership, but to the next generation of eSports fans and stars.

EA FIFA: After 32 players battled it out in Berlin over 2 days, Corentin “Vitality Rockyy” Chevrey won the 2017 FIFA Ultimate Team Championship taking home $160,000. With a full season of competitive play, $1M+ dedicated to FIFA prize pools and a Saturday 11AM time slot on ESPN - still failed to draw a lot of viewers with only 40,000 total and 19,000 in the 18-49 demo.

For comparison, last years 2016 FIWC (FIFA Interactive World Cup) - the big FIFA finals if you will - drew 46,000 total viewers on Fox Sports 1, which has almost the same household penetration as ESPN2.

This year's 2017 FIWC will be provide a decent baseline to see EA's efforts in relation to TV viewership.

ELEAGUE's Street Fighter V Invitational Playoffs (Photo: Turner)

ELEAGUE Street Fighter: The fighting game continues to grow with this week's show hitting 330,000 total and 177,000 viewers in 18-49. This makes it ELEAGUE's highest rated show for 2017 and the 4th highest rated show across their various programming since starting in 2016.

The "preview/highlight" shows tend do perform well in addition to only being 1 hour and ending at 11 PM; which would help increase the viewer numbers as well.

This weekend's playoffs will be another good test to see if can now beat the 350,000 viewer mark.

Including replays, 2017 has now seen 25 eSports programs on TV at the end of May - whereas 2016 saw 22 in total.

EA MADDEN: This weekend saw the conclusion to EA Madden's 1st Season of competitive play with Michael "Skimbo" Skimbo taking home the belt along with $100,000. While the total viewers were ~100,000 less than last year there are two potential reasons: 01/ Last year's Championship was on ESPN2 which is in 15M+ more households than the NFL Network /02 The 1st Madden Championship on TV, held on Tue afternoon and with no other eSports competition probably added to the allure.

The 48,000 viewers in the 18-49 demo was the #2 ranked show on NFL Network for Sunday.

ELEAGUE STREET FIGHTER: This week saw Turner's ELEAGUE Street Fighter series soar to 221,000 total viewers and 145,000 in the 18-49 demo making it the #2 ranked show for the year and even ahead of ELEAGUE's Counter-Strike Major. Will be tough but would great to see the 5/26 Championship reach the 300,000 total viewers mark.

Even more impressive, ELEAGUE beat the English Premier League in BOTH total viewers and the 18-49 demo. For the Twitter "comments", the EPL afternoon slot is better than ELEAGUE's 10PM start time in addition to being....the English Premier League which got $1B from NBC Sports for a 6-year rights deal.

EA FIFA: The 5/6 Europe Regional ratings were updated garnering 83,000 total viewers and 46,000 in the 18-49 demo. This weekend is also the conclusion to EA FIFA's 1st Season as well as the finalists battle it out in Berlin.